A Regional Chronology of Operas, Composers and Librettists
By Peter McKenzie-Brown
This is not meant to be a complete list of Western operas - thousands have been written and performed. Some are on this popular list because of their reputation only; most, however, are operas I have enjoyed on stage, film or disc. Taken together, this list probably covers more than 95% of those produced around the world in a typical year. In that sense only - as a popular compendium of the great and the good - this list is complete.
More in this blog on opera:
- Verdi: A Towering Genius
- The Parallel Lives of Verdi and Wagner
- Opera, Anyone?
- A Commentary on Giulio Cesare, an Italian opera
By Peter McKenzie-Brown
Italian Opera
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (1567-1643):
• Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria (1640) Libretto: Giacomo Badoaro
• L’incoronazione di Poppea (1642) Libretto: Giaouanni Francesco Busennello
Georg Frederic Handel (1685-1749):
• Giulio Cesare, (1724) Libretto by Nicola Francesco Haym.
Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868):
• The Barber of Seville (1815) Libretto: Cesare Sterbini • La Cenerentola (1816) Libretto: Jacopo Ferretti
• Elisabetta Regina d’Inghilterra (1815) Libretto: Giovanni Schmidt
• Semiramide (1823) Libretto: Gaetano Rossi
• Guillaume Tell (1829) Libretto: Victor Joseph Etienne de Jouy and Hippolyte Louis Florent Bis
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (1797-1848):
• Anna Bolena (1830) Libretto: Felice Romani
• L’elisir d’amore (1832) Libretto: Felice Romani
• Lucia di Lammermoor (1835) Libretto: Salvatore Cammarano
• La fille du regiment (1840) Libretto: Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Jean Francois Alfred Bayard
• Don Pasquale (1843) Libretto: The composer and Giovanni Ruffini
Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835):
• La Somnambula (1831) Libretto: Felice Romani
• Norma (1831) Libretto: Felice Romani
• I Puritani (1835) Libretto: Carlo Pepoli
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901):
• Nabucco (1840) Libretto: Temistocle Solera
• I due Foscari (1844) Libretto: Francesco Maria Piave
• Atilla (1846) Libretto: Temistocle Solera
• Macbeth (1847) Libretto: Francesco Maria Piave
• Luisa Miller (1849)
Libretto: Salvatare Cammarano• Il Trovatore (1851) Libretto: Salvatore Cammarano and Leone Emanuele Bardare
• Rigoletto (1852) Libretto: Francesco Maria Piave
• La Traviata (1853) Libretto: Francesco Maria Piave
• Un Ballo in Maschera (1859) Libretto: Antonio Somma
• La Forza del Destino (1863) Libretto: Francesco Maria Piave
• Don Carlos (1865) Libretto: Francois Joseph Mery and Camille du Locle
• Aida (1871) Libretto: Antonio Ghislanzoni
• Simon Boccanegra (1857/1881) Libretto: Francesco Maria Piave/Arrigo Boito
• Otello (1883) Libretto: Arrigo Boito
• Falstaff (1892)
Libretto: Arrigo Boito
Arrigo Boito (1842-1918):
• Mefistofele (1868) Libretto: Arrigo Boito
Amilcare Ponchielli (1834-1886):
• La Gioconda (1876) Libretto: Arrigo Boito
Pietro Maskagni (1863-1945):
• Cavalleria Rusticana (1890) Libretto: Guido Menasci and Giovanni Targioni-Tozetti
Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857-1919):
• Pagliacci (1892)
Libretto: The composer
Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924):
• Manon Lescaut (1893) Libretto: Marco Praga, Domenico Oliva, Luigi Illica, Giuseppe Giacosa, Giulio Ricordi
• La Bohème (1896) Libretto: Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
• Tosca (1900) Libretto: Giuseppe Adami and Luigi Illica
• Madama Butterfly (1904) Libretto: Giuseppe Adami and Luigi Illica
• La Fanciulla del West (1910) Libretto: Guelfo Civinni and Carlo Zingarini
• Turandot (1924) Libretto: Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni
Viennese and German Opera
Georg Fredrich Handel (1685-1759):
• Tamerlano (1724) Libretto: Piovene Agostino (adapted by Nicola Francesco Haym)
Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787):
• Iphigenie en Tauride (1779) Libretto: Nicholas-François Guillard
Antonio Salieri (1750-1825):
• Tarare (1787) Libretto: Gaetano Rossi
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791):
• Le nozze di Figaro (Marriage of Figaro) (1786) Libretto: Lorenza da Ponte
• Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Abduction from the Seraglio) (1786) Libretto: Johann Gottlieb Stephanie, based on text by Christoph Friedrich Brezner
• Don Giovanni (1787) Libretto: Lorenza da Ponte
• Così fan tutte (1790) Libretto: Lorenza da Ponte
• Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) (1791) Libretto: Emanuel Schickaneder
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827):
• Fidelio (1815) Libretto: Joseph Ferdinand von Sonnleithner, Stephan von Breuning and George Friedrich Treitschke
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826):
• Der Freischutz (1821) Libretto: Friedrich Kind
Richard Wagner (1813-1883):
• Der Fliegender Hollander (The Flying Dutchman) (1843)
• Tannhauser (1845)
• Lohengrin (1850) • Tristan und Isolde (1859)
• Der Meistersinger von Nurrenberg (1865)
• The Ring Cycle:
o Das Rheingold (1869)
o Die Walkure (1870)
o Siegfried (1876)
o Gotterdammerung (1876)
• Parsifal (1882) All libretti by the composer
Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921):
• Hansel und Gretel (1893) Libretto: Adelheid Wette, the composer’s sister
Johann Strauss (1825-1899):
• Die Fledermaus (1874) Libretto: Carl Haffner and Richard Genee
Richard Strauss (1864-1948):
• Salome (1905) Libretto: Oscar Wilde, translated into German by Hedwig Lachman
• Electra (1909) Libretto: Hugo van Hoffsmanthal
• Der Rosenkavalier (1911) Libretto: Hugo van Hoffsmanthal
• Ariadne auf Naxos (1916) Libretto: Hugo van Hoffsmanthal
• Der Frau ohne Schatten (1919) Libretto: Stefan Zweig
• Arabella (1933) Libretto: Hugo van Hoffsmanthal
• Cappriccio (1943) Libretto: Clemens Kraus
Busoni, Ferruccio (1866-1924)
• Doktor Faust (1929) Libretto: The composer; incomplete at the time of his death, and completed by others.
Franz Lehar (1870-1948):
• Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow) (1905) Libretto: Viktor Leon and Leo Stein
Alban Berg (1885-1935):
• Wozzeck (1925) Libretto: The composer
Rich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957):
• Die tote Stadt (1917) Libretto: The composer
French Opera
Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864):• Les Huguenots (1837) Libretto: Eugene Scribe and Emile Deschamps
• Le prophete (1849) Libretto: Eugene Scribe
• L’Africaine (1865) Libretto: Eugene Scribe
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869):
• Les Troyens (composed 1856-1858; first fully produced 1972) Libretto: The composer
Charles Gounod (1818-1893):• Faust (1859) Libretto: Jules Barbier and ichel Carr
• Romeo and Juliet (1867) Libretto: Jules Barbier and Michel Carr
Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880):
• Les Contes d’Hoffman (1881) Libretto: Jules Barbier and Michel Carré
Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)
• Samson et Dalila (1877) Libretto: Ferdinand Lemaire
Georges Bizet (1838-1875):
• Carmen (1875) Libretto: Henri Moilhac and Ludovic Halevy
Jules Massenet (1842-1912):
• Manon (1884) Libretto: Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille
• Thais (1892) Libretto: Louis Gallet
Claude Debussy (1862-1918):
• Pelleas et Melisande (1902) Libretto: The composer
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963):
• Dialogues des Carmelites (1957) Libretto: Georges Bernanos
Claude-Michel Schönberg (1944- ):
• Les Miserables (1985) Libretto: Herbert Kretzmer, after Alain Boublil, based on Victor Hugo’s novel
Czech and Russian Opera
Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857):
• Zhizn za tsarya (Life for the Tsar) (1836) Libretto: Georgi von Rosen, based on Alexandr Pushkin
• Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842) Libretto: The composer, Konstantin Bakhturin, et. al., after the poem by Alexander Pushkin
Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884):
• Prodana nevesta (The Bartered Bride) (1870) Libretto: Karel Sabina
Alexander Borodin (1833-1887)
• Prince Igor (1890) Libretto: The composer, after Vladimir Vasil'yevich Stasov
Modest Mussorgski (1839-1881):
• Boris Gudonov (1874) Libretto: The composer
• Khovanshchina (1880) Libretto: The composer
Peter Illych Tschaikovsky (1840-1893):
• Eugene Onegin (1879) Libretto: The composer
• Mazeppa (1884) Libretto: The composer
Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904)
• Rusalka (1901) Libretto: Jaroslav Kvapil
Sergei Prokofieff (1891-1953)
• War and Peace (1944) Libretto: The composer and Mira Mendelson
British and North American Opera
Arthur Seymour Sullivan (1836-1911); Librettist, William Schwenck Gilbert (1842-1900):
• Trial by Jury (1875)
• The Sorcerer (1877)
• H.M.S. Pinafore, or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor (1878) • The Pirates of Penzance, or, The Slave of Duty (1879) • Iolanthe, or, The Peer and the Peri (1882)
• The Mikado, or, The Town of Titipu (1885)
• The Yeomen of the Guard, or, The Merryman and his Maid (1888)
• The Gondoliers, or, The King of Barataria (1889)
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971):
• The Rake’s Progress (1971) Libretto: W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman
George Gershwin (1898-1937):
• Porgy and Bess (1934) Libretto: Debose Heyward and Ira Gershwin
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976):
• Peter Grimes (1945) Libretto: Montagu Slater
• Albert Herring (1947) Libretto:Eric Crozier
• Billy Budd (1951) Libretto: E.M. Forster and Eric Crozier
• Death in Venice (1973) Libretto: Myfanwy Piper
Carlyle Floyd (1926 - ):
• Susannah (1954) Libretto: The composer
John Estacio (1966 - ):
• Filumena (2003) Libretto: John Murrell
